Loeb continues French command

Loeb won SS5 and was third quickest in SS6, and crucially he was ahead of the Finn in both stages.

Having gone into the second leg with a 19.9-second lead, he has now stretched his margin to a seemingly comfortable 29.0 seconds.

Loeb, who famously won every stage in the corresponding rally last year, has now won four of the six stages held so far and looks in ominous form to repeat his victory of last year.

Gronholm continues to be at a loss to explain his lack of pace back compared to Loeb and believes he has nothing left in either him or his Focus to be able to catch the Frenchman this weekend.

He does have a strong chance of finishing second, however, holding a one-minute advantage over Mikko Hirvonen, who has moved up into third place.

Hirvonen has moved up into third, and with a strong performance this morning, which included being fastest of all in SS6, the 26.20km pass from Ucciani to Bastelica.

Dani Sordo has continued his stellar pace in the Citroen Xsara, moving up a position to fourth after setting the second fastest time on both of this morning's stages.

Peugeot privateer Alex Bengue, who had held third overnight, dropped to fifth while complaining of nervous handling issues with his 307, ahead of Kronos Citroen's Xavier Pons.

It was a bad morning for the Stobart VK Ford team. Jari-Matti Latvala, who had held seventh overnight, suffered disaster in SS6, going off the road and crashing out of the leg.

His teammate Matthew Wilson had already suffered a similar fate in SS5, running off road at a slow corner approximately 5kms into the stage and not being able to get his car back out of a ditch onto the road.

Neither crew were hurt in their incidents and it is not yet known whether either will restart tomorrow.

Francois Duval suffered brake problems through the last 10kms of SS5 and dropped from 11th overnight to 13th, having lost three minutes to Loeb through the stage.

Fellow Skoda driver driver Andrea Aigner also hit trouble in the same stage, stopping at the start.

Top 20 leaderboard after SS6:

Pos  Driver     Make     Time
 1.  Loeb       Citroen  1h 54:26.3
 2.  Gronholm   Ford     +     29.0
 3.  Hirvonen   Ford     +   1:31.2
 4.  Sordo      Citroen  +   1:40.0
 5.  Bengue     Peugeot  +   1:44.4
 6.  Pons       Citroen  +   2:06.0
 7.  Stohl      Peugeot  +   2:51.6
 8.  Sarrazin   Subaru   +   3:32.4
 9.  Kopecky    Skoda    +   3:38.0
10.  Galli      Peugeot  +   3:42.0
11.  Solberg    Subaru   +   4:05.0
12.  Rovanpera  Skoda    +   5:49.3
13.  Latvala    Ford     +   7:06.0
14.  Duval      Skoda    +   7:24.8
15.  Meeke      Citroen  +  10:45.5
16.  Aava       Suzuki   +  11:27.1
17.  Atkinson   Subaru   +  12:06.5
18.  Vouilloz   Peugeot  +  12:07.9
19.  Tirabassi  Citroen  +  13:20.4
20.  Aigner     Skoda    +  13:27.9